Technical Field
This disclosure relates to software applications which are run on wireless mobile communication devices, including the licenses which authorize their use.
Description of Related Art
A broad variety of software applications may be downloaded, installed, and run on wireless mobile communication devices. These software applications may relate to virtually any user interest or need, such as education, entertainment, finance, health, instant messaging, social networking, maps, navigation, music, news, document generation, photography, shopping, sports, travel, utilities, and/or the weather.
One challenge relating to these downloaded software applications may be to enforce licenses which restrict their use. For example, the vendor of a software application may license its use by one user, but may not want the application to be used by another user without additional compensation. Another example is a license which expires after a time period.
Technologies have been developed which protect such downloaded software applications from uses beyond what have been licensed. However, such technologies may require software application developers to maintain servers which provide authorization keys. Such technologies may also require a license agent to be run in the wireless mobile communication device which is device dependent, requiring a different license agent to be written for each different wireless mobile communication device platform.